


truth or dare

by schrodingers_zombie



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: (very briefly touched on), Autistic Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Dialogue Heavy, Fluff, Fluff and Humor, Getting to Know Each Other, Infodumping as a Love Language, M/M, Past Georgie Barker/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist, Pre-Season/Series 05, Truth or Dare, but the kiss part is very brief because uh I Cannot Write Them, car kisses, mantis shrimps, road trip to scotland, scotland honeymoon period
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-27
Updated: 2020-05-27
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:27:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24402031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/schrodingers_zombie/pseuds/schrodingers_zombie
Summary: “This is going to sound stupid,” Martin says, and hesitates. “But, uh, can we… play something? Like, a game or something. I— the, the Lonely, I… I need to talk. Something like… truth or dare."
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 19
Kudos: 274





	truth or dare

“This is going to sound stupid,” Martin says, and hesitates. “But, uh, can we… play something?”

He keeps his eyes on the road, so he can’t see Jon’s reaction, but the confusion is audible in his voice when he responds.

“Like… music? I mean, sure— I don’t have much on my phone but I can— “

“No,” Martin interrupts. “Like, a game or something. I— the, the Lonely, I… I need to _talk_. Something like… truth or dare, or…”

“Oh. We… we can do that.” Jon goes quiet for a moment. “I’ve never actually played truth or dare before.”

Martin can’t stop a snort of laughter from escaping, and it’s weird how unfamiliar the sincerity still feels, even days after leaving the Lonely’s cold shore.

“It’s pretty self-explanatory,” he says, smiling. “Want to go first? Truth or dare?”

“Uh. Truth, I guess,” Jon says.

“Right, right. Probably should have thought of a question. Let’s go with a classic: who was your first kiss?”

“Georgie,” Jon answers. “My last year of uni. We’d been friends for some time when she asked me out; I hadn’t even realized that we were on a date until she leaned in to kiss me at the end of the night. But then we kept— we kept doing it.”

Martin sneaks a glance to see Jon blushing.

“I know that’s… really late, but I hadn’t… before, I never… had the chance to…” Jon continues quickly, possibly misinterpreting Martin’s maybe-slightly-jealous look as judgement. “But yes. That was my first kiss. Anyway, your turn. Truth or dare?”

“Truth,” Martin says. “I mean, obviously. Not sure what dares we’d really be able to do right now. Sorry, Jon, I can only give you half of this essential experience right now.”

Jon hums in consideration. Martin wants to take his hand, feels pins and needles of adoration overwhelm his Lonely-chilled heart, but in a frankly stunning display of self-control he keeps his hands on the steering wheel.

“What was… the first law you remember breaking? Don’t worry, I’m not a cop. I’d have to tell you if I was.”

“What? Oh. Haha,” Martin says, and thinks for a moment. “Wow, that’s a hard one.”

“Is it? Really? _That_ I don’t believe.” He can hear Jon’s smirk.

“…No.” The laughter threatens to bubble up from inside him again. “There’s underage drinking, of course, and shoplifting… Oh, there was this one time when I was really young that might be the first. There was this book that I _desperately_ wanted— about, you know, bugs and spiders and _creepy-crawly_ stuff. Big nice hardcover thing, with really cool pictures. The kind of book that’s just the _coolest_ to a little baby nerd. Except I completely didn’t know how bookstores worked and I tried to just walk out really fast with it under my arm. Of course they caught me; they made my m— they made us pay for it _and_ didn’t let me keep it, which is _bullshit_.”

Martin hazards another glance at Jon and finds him gazing fondly and amusedly at him. Now it’s Martin’s turn to blush.

“Didn’t realize you were such a notorious criminal,” Jon teases.

“Oh, not quite. I stopped when I got older, mostly. It got a lot more… I couldn’t risk that sort of thing anymore.”

“Right. Of course.”

They’re quiet for a moment, until Jon breaks the silence.

“My turn again,” Jon says abruptly, sounding almost apologetic. Martin wants to tell him that it’s fine, he’s fine, but months in the grip of the Lonely have made some words stick in his throat and this particular piece of emotional vulnerability struggles to come out. He lets Jon continue. “What do you want to ask me?”

Martin exhales deeply. Summons words again. “Let’s change it up a little. Get out of the past. Um… if you could be any other animal, what would you be?”

“Mantis shrimp,” Jon answers immediately.

“Oh, that was… unexpectedly fast. _Shrimp_ , really? Why? Is… Jon, is that a height joke?”

“No! Mantis shrimp have the most complex visual system we know of,” Jon says, and out of the corner of his eyes Martin can see his hands start to twist together and flap, the way he’s noticed they always do when Jon is interested in or excited about something. “They’ve got over a dozen types of photoreceptor cells, depending on specific species – we’ve only got _three_. And they have polarization vision – sensitivity to the _polarization_ of light, they can see it like we see color – possibly to an extent much greater than even other species with polarization vision. And the amount of eye movement in _all_ axes is _unusually_ flexible, plus their eyes move independently of one another which just increases their visual field even _more_. Some people think they can see a bunch of… ‘secret colors’, which is not entirely an unreasonable assumption for one with little to no knowledge of optic systems, but it’s completely wrong. In fact, their color _perception_ isn’t so different from ours despite their sensitivity to a much greater range of wavelengths – but it’s everything else that’s so much more interesting. Yes, sure, they don’t use all of those photoreceptors to see _colors_ that we don’t, but they get to see a whole new _type_ of visual perception of the world that we can’t even _imagine_ outside of a purely scientific understanding. Forget brand new colors, I want to see _that_.”

He stops for breath and Martin feels a smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.

“Wow,” he says.

“Plus, their claws can punch _crazy_ fast and hard,” Jon adds and jabs the air demonstratively. A second passes and they both start cracking up, laughing like it’s the most hilarious thing either of them has ever seen or done.

Martin gasps for air and wipes the tears from his eyes, trying to regain enough composure to actually keep the car from swerving off the road. Thank g-d there are no other cars on the road, because he is definitely not driving safely right now.

“Sorry, sorry,” he says and chokes down more giggles. “I don’t know why—it just—the _punch_ —”

Jon’s shaking in silent laughter. It’s funny, Martin realizes, but in all their – g-d, in all their _years_ of knowing each other, he’s not sure he’s ever seen Jon really, properly laugh like this. It’s… kind of adorable.

“Right, your turn again,” Jon gasps, face in his hands. “Give me a second.”

“Nothing too punchy, please,” Martin says and it sends them into another fit of unstoppable laughter.

Martin has been depressed before. Now, as he’s catching his breath and struggling to control his laughter, he can’t help but _recognize_ this. That flood of emotion all of a sudden, like someone’s unstopped the dam between anhedonia and _everything else_ and it all comes rushing back in at once. For all the supernatural and monsters the fears have thrown at them, this is all so mundanely _normal_. Survivable. Something that can be _recovered_ from.

“Alright. I don’t know, uh… this is—this is something I’ve been… I wanted to know. Uh. What did you think of me when we first met? Or—the first year or so at the archives, rather. Before… before Prentiss,” Jon says.

“Honestly? I thought you were a bit of a dick,” says Martin.

“Ah. Fair. Possibly an understatement, even.”

“A really _hot_ dick, though. Which was _infuriating_. One part of me wanted to punch you, one part of me desperately needed you to like me, and the third part of me wanted you to sweep me off my feet and kiss me like the world was ending. But I was _terrified_ of you finding out about my CV and firing me, so… the make-tea-and-suck-up part won out. Really, don’t take this the wrong way but… I hated how much I liked you until… actually, until the ghost thing.”

“The… ghost thing?” Jon asks hesitantly.

“Yeah. When Jane Prentiss attacked? We were trapped in that room and I said something about feeling stuck and you thought I meant that I was _haunting_ you.”

“Oh. Right, yes.”

Martin laughs. “You don’t remember, do you? That’s okay. The whole conversation – when you admitted you believed it all, that the skeptic thing was a, a _ruse_ – that was when I started realizing you were… just as scared and ignorant as the rest of us. But that ghost thing was the moment I was like, wow, this guy’s a _dork_ and it’s _adorable_.”

Now Jon’s hiding his face and sinking down in his seat, and Martin doesn’t need to see it to tell he’s blushing again.

“Well. Sorry for thinking you were a ghost, Martin. And… sorry for… how I treated you back then. Even before the… everything, I was… horrible. To you.”

“It’s okay—”

“No, it really wasn’t. I was consistently _awful_ to you. I know it’s not even close to an excuse, so don’t try to accept it as one, but as something of an explanation perhaps? I was _grossly_ underqualified for any of this… or, I mean, any of what I thought it was, and it all intimidated me so much, and I… I guess I thought that being the mean boss that everyone hated was better than being the boss that clearly didn’t belong there. And Tim and Sasha I knew already, so by default you were the target of most of it. Which, again, was really, really… _shitty_. So. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you,” Martin says.

“Also I did think you were incredibly attractive and that very much intimidated me as well,” Jon adds quickly.

Martin smirks. “Thank you,” he repeats, with a dramatic swish of his hair.

“Everything about you was so good and I was so envious but also very into you and it felt like as your professional superior I couldn’t do anything about it so I just… repressed it all and turned my crush into… condescension and criticism. I’m very good at repressing things, if you haven’t noticed.”

“Aww,” Martin says. “That’s possibly the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard, but aww. Hey, wait, this was _my_ turn to answer! I haven’t even asked you your question yet!”

“Ask away, then,” Jon says, waving a hand.

Martin taps his fingers on the steering wheel, deliberating.

“How… are you feeling right now?” he says finally.

“Oh,” Jon says, and quiets. “I don’t know. Uh… happy. Happy, I think.”

He shifts in his seat and continues.

“I’m glad you’re okay. Still relieved that I was able to… to bring you back out of the Lonely. Scared, about whatever’s going to happen now, about the fact that I don’t _know_. But happy that you’re here with me.”

“Me too,” Martin says softly.

“And I feel… I feel like I want you to pick _dare_ this time.”

“Alright,” Martin says, heart pounding in his ears. Somehow he has stopped the car in the shoulder of the road and angled his body towards Jon, even though he doesn’t feel like he’s in control of any of his limbs at the moment, even though he feels like he’s floating in his own body. Like he knows what’s coming.

“Truth or dare?”

“Dare,” Martin breathes, knowing how silly and primary school this entire situation is, but sincerely not giving a fuck.

“Kiss me,” Jon says.

And he does. Or he tries to, at least, but he moves forward too fast and the seatbelt does that obnoxious thing where it locks up at the exact wrong time, and he’s _bounced_ back down with a huff.

“Seriously?” he says, and then they both erupt into laughter again. Then they’re scrabbling at the seatbelt locks until they click open and Martin’s not sure who moves forward first but finally they’re pressed against one another, smiling into each other’s mouths, still giggling into the kiss.

Jon’s hands keep moving, on Martin’s back and neck and shoulders and face and in his hair and on his arm, roaming and wandering like Jon’s desperately trying to feel all of Martin at once. Martin gets it; he wants to feel all of this instance at once too. He breathes deep, tries to capture years and years in this single moment forever. Jon’s lips are soft and warm – like lips usually are, sure, but _g-d_ , Martin notices every detail. He tastes like bergamot and tea. He tastes like poetry.

Martin leans back, eventually, reluctantly. He can’t stop smiling.

“Wow,” he says. “I feel like I can see new colors.”

“Shut up, Martin,” Jon snorts, and swats at him. Martin grabs his hand, presses a kiss to it.

“I’m happy too,” he murmurs.

Jon just flutters his fingers in response, eyes bright.

“I know I should be scared. And I am, obviously. Terrified. But also—I don’t know. I feel like it’s going to be alright. _We’re_ going to be alright. We’re probably not safe, not forever, but you’re here _with_ me now. Not like… I’m not doing this alone anymore. We won’t ever need to go through this alone again.”

“Something could happen to us. To—to separate us,” Jon says, like he doesn’t want to bring it up, like he has to.

“I won’t let it,” Martin says, and leans in to kiss Jon again, stroking his hair with the hand that’s not intertwined with Jon’s. He doesn’t want this moment to end, but it has to, doesn’t it?

“We should get back on the road,” he makes himself say.

Jon whines in disappointment, but he lets go of Martin’s hand.

“Can we… can we continue this when we get to the safehouse?”

Martin smiles.

“Oh, _definitely_.”

**Author's Note:**

> is this good? maybe not. but is it a self-indulgent vehicle for several disjointed ideas i had about jonmartin that i wanted to do *something* with? i mean yes yeah that's just a description of what this is. mantis shrimp information comes from brief wikipedia research and i am unfortunately not an expert so apologies and please correct me if any of the facts are wrong or if i misinterpreted them. hope you enjoyed. mwah love u.


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